Once you realize the influence of your past on your present thoughts, feelings, and behavior it can get really scary. Its so easy to sleepwalk and repeat the same things over and over again simply because they are familiar. Of course, the down side is the repetition takes place whether or not what you are doing is good for you or not. Maybe this is Mother Nature's space saving thing, repeition is a bit more compact than doing something new all the time. Whatever...I prefer new over automatic. So how do you mess with this?
Lets assume that 'new' is a lot more interesting and adventuresome simply because you don't have predictability and control. Anything can happen including something better than what you have been repetitively doing. Lets take me for example. I grew up in a home where communication was reserved for the 'functional' things in life like eating, sleeping, health, following family rules, and of course, work. Communicating about personal feelings was conspicuously absent. Tensions would build and be discharged in the culturally sanctioned or a little less sanctioned ways, with an occasional unpredictable eruption to make life interesting.
One of my repetitions is to set up the same thing in my immediate family. Once aware of its limitations, my communication experiments led me to the joys of that occasional 'family meeting' where we all get to speak our minds (and feelings) democratically. My son knows a lot more than he dares to tell unless invited, and my wife feels a lot more than she is aware of until she communicates. And I know both of those experiences pretty well myself. Once you get a taste for it though, personal communication about your emotional experience to people who matter becomes a necessity. Then you start wondering how the hell you ever lived without it no matter how uncomfortable it temporarily makes you.
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